


soul stretched tight across the skies

by orphan_account



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe, Multi, Mythology - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-12-11
Updated: 2012-05-02
Packaged: 2017-10-27 05:03:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/291862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's not that Dave doesn't believe in the gods. It's closer to the truth to say he doesn't find the question of belief relevant. If the gods are up there somewhere, they apparently have better things to do than involve themselves with humans, and apathy is one feeling Dave knows how to reciprocate.</p><p>This is a hard mindset to keep up when one of them shows up in his room talking about destiny, but Dave's certainly going to give it his best shot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. what's a god to a non-believer

**Author's Note:**

> I know trolls-as-gods is not an original concept, and I'm certain it's been done better than this. But I wanted to make up a mythology for them, and somehow grew a story around it. Not well, but. It's there. Anyway, I'm bad at summaries - more characters than Dave are going to be heavily involved.
> 
> A friend read this and, I guess, didn't find any egregious errors, but I don't really have a beta so I apologize for any errors that stem from my carelessness instead of my general state of being Bad At Writing. Well, I apologize for those too. I'm gonna stop being self-deprecating now and get on with it.
> 
> Title's from "Preludes" by T. S. Eliot. Character and relationship tags (and also warnings, if they're applicable, which I doubt) will be added as they become relevant.

_I don't know exactly what a prayer is.  
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down  
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,  
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,  
which is what I have been doing all day.  
Tell me, what else should I have done?  
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?  
Tell me, what is it you plan to do  
with your one wild and precious life?_  
Mary Oliver, "The Summer Day"

  


  


It's summer, it's hot as fuck, and it hasn't rained in what seems like years. Dave's sweating through his shirt, which is gross, but at least the mud's dried up some, so he just has to brush off grass stains and scrape the dirt from under his nails before heading up the temple steps. Last time he visited, it was mid-spring and he'd ended up covered head to foot in mud after catching the damned creature. He'd walked across town cursing Jade Harley and wondering why she had to take a vow to the goddess of Frogs and Space and Glowing and Bullshit.

His frog-catching skills have apparently improved a little, and he's come out of the ordeal a little cleaner this time. He curses Jade only mildly.

The temple façade isn't decorated besides a black banner with the goddess's emblem. One of the girls at the door is sitting with her legs outstretched and her hands folded in her lap – he's seen her here before. She's pretty, dark-skinned and short-haired, at least five years older than him. The other girl, leaning lazily against the doorframe, he hasn't met. She's got brilliant red hair braided and slung over her shoulder, and she looks young. She must be new.

She's the one who greets him, nervously, looking at the older girl for approval after she speaks. Dave hands her the box, and she looks inside and says, "He's beautiful." Dave manages to not laugh out loud, and she returns the box to him and leads him inside.

"Take off your shoes before you enter the courtyard," she says, and goes back to her post.

The courtyard's absurd, really. The vegetation is improbably lush, even in the midst of the drought, and there's got to be some secret behind that, although Jade would probably just tell him it was the goddess's blessing or something. He spots her immediately, sitting on a bench near the center, chatting with some other girl.

They all wear simple black frocks, but Jade manages to look strangely pretty, hands dirty and hair tangled. As far as her hair goes, it has flourished after seven months in the temple. Dave can't say for certain if she even cut it before her vows, but it seems to have grown exponentially, taking on a life of its own, cascading down her back and attacking her features with errant tendrils.

When she sees him, she lets out a squeal and runs to meet him, throwing her arms around his neck.

"Whoa, easy there, Harley."

She detaches. "I didn't know you were coming!"

"What was I supposed to do, send a pigeon?" While he's speaking, Jade takes the box from his hands and opens it, smiling and waggling her fingers at the frog inside it. "Anyway, how's life in the lesbian garden club?"

Jade punches him playfully in the stomach. ("Ow, Jade, what the-") "Shut up, Dave. Also, stop whining, I barely tapped you."

"Hey now." He's still holding his stomach. There's no way that's not going to leave a bruise. The little harpy has muscle that shouldn't even be allowed in a sixteen-year-old girl, and she knows that. "I thought you might not recognize me if I started bein' respectful."

Jade giggles and passes the box back to him. "So are you gonna make an offering of this little guy, or are you just going to stand here being all blasphemous?"

He shrugs. "I'd prefer the latter, but I don't really have a choice, do I?"

The altar is tucked at the very back of the courtyard. It's a statue of the goddess, kneeling, one hand holding a lamp with a candle inside and the other outstretched and empty. Her dress and hair are painted black, her eyes and lips a matching green, but her skin is just the marble, polished to the point that it seems to glow. It's gorgeous, not that Dave would say that out loud.

He's done this before, so Jade watches from a few feet away. Dave lights the candle and gingerly takes the frog out of the box. Honestly, it's a small one compared to most of the frogs in the courtyard, but Jade says it doesn't matter how big the frog is, it's all about your intention. Or something like that.

He sets the frog down gently in the goddess's upturned palm.

"Say your prayer, Dave."

"Yeah, yeah." He doesn't really have much of a prayer to say. It'd be easier to fake it for Jade if there were some prescribed words he could recite with a kind of false piety. He ends up saying, "Guide my feet, and light my path." It's generic enough, and it seems appropriate.

Dave can tell by her sigh that Jade's not impressed, or really even convinced.

"You can't move until the frog jumps out of her hand! If it won't, it doesn't have her blessing." She had told him this the first time, and he'd remarked about how that didn't make any sense. To be fair, the whole thing – the goddess, the offerings, the prayers – didn't make any sense to him either, so he hadn't argued further.

He waits. It takes a few seconds for the little guy to gather up the courage to jump, but he does.

When he turns around to face Jade, she grins at him. "Maybe she'll guide you to be smarter!"

Jade and Dave end up sitting in the back of the courtyard near the sculpture, she on one of the stone benches with him on the ground in front of her, parallel to the bench, resting against her legs. She likes playing with his hair. He pretends to hate it.

"You never visit," she says.

"Shit, if they'd just sell offering frogs outside, I might be more inclined to-"

"I'm always worried you're mad at me."

"Never been mad at you, Jade." It's a lie. When she'd told him what she planned to do on her sixteenth, he'd been angry, but that was childish, selfish. He's over that. Now he's just a little jealous she had known what she wanted.

"Mmm." She doesn't speak for a minute, staring out over the courtyard. "How's your work going?"

Dave lets out a scoff. "It's goin', I guess. Not much to be said. The other day I got to wash a fork that had actually been in the mouth of the regional governor. I thought I was going to faint."

"Oh, Dave." She has her fingers twisted up in his hair – it's going to look so ridiculous when he leaves. "It'll get better. You've gotta get through the awful jobs first. Work your way up. They can't have you washing dishes forever."

"Not like I can cook worth a damn."

"They'll teach you." She pushes his head back so he's looking up at her. "If you hate it so bad – Dave, I told you, you should have tried to join the musicians' guild."

"They wouldn't have taken me," he says. "Got no family but my bro, and he's halfway off the grid. I didn't have the options you did. You know that."

Jade smoothes his hair down and stands up, pulling Dave to his feet. "It's gonna be okay. I won't let you be unhappy."

He laughs – she's so positive, fuck, he hates that in everyone but his friends. From Jade, it almost fools him into thinking everything's peachy. He hugs her before he leaves, both arms and everything.

-

It's the middle of the night when Dave wakes up, which is bullshit. He sleeps like a log. He'd sleep through entire weekdays if he could. So, really, it's bullshit for him to wake up for no reason after maybe two hours of sleep. He elects to fall right back asleep until –

"Hello, Dave."

He jumps up involuntarily, curses, scrambles to stay perched on his twin bed. His eyes have started to adjust to the light – the interloper is a girl, maybe his age or a little older, and she's standing all calm with her hands behind her back at the foot of his bed. "What the fuck… who…" Dave isn't really accustomed to dealing with burglars or home intruders and isn't really sure what he's supposed to say. Furthermore, he's not certain how she got in without waking up the rest of the house.

Unless, of course, she murdered all of them.

She hardly looks capable, but maybe she's got a gun or something.

The girl holds up her hands, as if reading his thoughts. "I'm not going to hurt you," she says. "Or anyone. I just wanted to speak to you."

"Um." Dave is, by this point, standing beside his bed, his legs pressed against his bedside table. He is very careful not to make any sudden movements. Alright, she's a girl, not a rabid dog, but Dave's instinct is still to avoid eye contact and back away slowly. He thinks he should probably do something, but he's blanking on what exactly that is. "Um."

The bitch is smiling, almost sweetly, head tilted a little, looking at him like he's the most pitiful abandoned kitten. "My name is Aradia," she says. "You have nothing to worry about."

At that, Dave laughs out loud. Panic is starting to set in, he's shaking a little, and the laugh comes out sounding more nervous than he'd have liked. "Bullshit." He tries to keep his voice from wavering.

"Really!"

"You don't look like a god to me," he says as steady as he can manage. "More like a teenage girl. And a burglar."

Her voice is thin and almost hollow-sounding, but her laugh is warm. She holds up her hands, and her palms glow red. Dave feels warmth spreading up from his fingers and toes like he's blushing all over, and when he looks down at his arms they're glowing as well. As he stares, he can see shapes forming – gears, cogs turning under his skin, fiery like red-hot metal, but he doesn't feel them when he touches the skin. "Um." He tries to move backwards but the table impedes him.

"I know you don't believe," the girl – the goddess? – says, and Dave sees the gears turning in her palms. "That's fine. I'm not so proud that I need you to believe in me. What do you believe in?"

Dave doesn't have a response for that. He's looking at his arms, looking at her, trying to grasp on to some explanation, but he's confused and disoriented.

"Do you believe in the interminable procession of time?" She's moved to stand in front of him, and there's nowhere for him to go. "You're a musician, right? I think all musicians have an affinity for time. Of all mortals, it's the musicians who best understand its nature."

"Um." Dave tears his eyes away from his arms and looks her in the eye for the first time. Her irises are a deeper red than his; they burn bright like embers set into her eye sockets. He swallows. "I – yeah. I guess."

"Believing in gods isn't what's important," Aradia says. "Respect for gods is nothing. Time is my master. Respect it instead. I can bend it, poke holes in it, weave through it, but it's not under my control. I can't rend it apart at the seams. However I damage and manipulate it, it never truly changes." She lowers her hands, and Dave feels the fever recede. "It doesn't stop, and it doesn't reverse its direction. Fate itself is inextricably linked with time. Some of my followers believe I can change those things for them. I'm not offended that you don't worship me. If you have a healthy respect for the nature of time, you're in much better shape than a lot of believers."

"Nice monologue." Dave doesn't feel like he's dreaming, so this is all a little ridiculous. He sits down on the edge of his bed. "So what's up?"

Aradia sits down beside him. "To be honest, I'm not sure yet." She rests her hands in her lap, and they're just so _tiny_. Dave wonders, a little inanely, how a god could have such small hands. "What I do know is that you're going to become very important very soon."

"Pretty sure I'm very important right now," Dave says. "Certified big fuckin' deal…" He's too tired for this.

"I don't know how you should prepare yourself." There's an edge of frustration to her voice, but she hides it well. "I don't know if I'm going to be the one to call on you when it's time. I don't know what's going to happen, or when. That's the frustrating part."

"I'm guessing this is something that's gonna happen whether I like it or not, right?"

Aradia smiles softly at him. "That seems to be the case. This is what I know: the future has a story to tell, and you're one of the heroes."

"Well." It's an interesting idea. He gets this image in his head of himself slinging swords around, slaying rampaging beasts and winning the hearts of fair maidens everywhere, then he feels kind of stupid. He doesn't really know what to make of any of this.

The girl by his side stands. "I'm going to leave now," she says. "When the time comes, I'll do everything I can to help you."

"Later."

"Goodbye, Dave." Aradia disappears without a fanfare. Dave looks at the spot she stood and wonders, silently, at the idea that the world might still have need of heroes.


	2. warm the globe, but leave my wretched soul alone

Dave doesn't tell John about it. John wouldn't believe him anyway, or maybe he would. He isn't sure which would be worse. Dave barely believes it himself, and he'd write it off as a dream if he hadn't woken up to find this dark red ribbon tied around his bedpost. He tried to pull the damned thing off, but the knot wouldn't give.

Dave had barely been up for ten minutes when John started banging on his door. "Dave! Dave, come on, or I'll start without you."

"Yeah, yeah, let me get decent."

They make breakfast. John can cook better than anyone Dave's ever met, except maybe the elder Egbert – better yet, he doesn't force Dave to swallow his pride and ask for lessons. Dave pretends that he's helping John grudgingly, and John plays along, bless his heart. Dave isn't sure what he'd do without him.

Dave can't get the eggs to crack right, he ends up smashing one against the side of the bowl so the shell goes in with the yolk, and John rolls his eyes and picks out the pieces with his skinny little fingers. They make the eggs scrambled, because John says you can't mess up scrambled eggs, but Dave's incompetence seems to take that as a challenge. He almost burns them, but John whacks him on the head with a spatula and rescues the eggs. John doesn't trust him with the pancakes yet.

Overcooked scrambled eggs and burnt bacon. The pancakes, at least, are perfect, but the rest of their breakfast is horribly sad.

John can't stop laughing. He says something like, "At least you're getting better!" but the message is kind of garbled.

Dave only eats the bacon and eggs because it doesn't seem fair to foist them on everyone else. He crunches black strips of pork between his teeth, telling himself he's a martyr.

Mr. Egbert appears a few minutes into the breakfast. "Smells delicious, boys." He claps the two of them on the back, and they laugh and laugh.

It's too hot to sit outside, so the boys end up in John's room, talking. John plays absent-mindedly with the cornflower-blue yarn around his wrists. Sometimes, when they run out of things to say, Dave asks John to tell him stories about the god they stand for. John always obliges. Dave doesn't really care, doesn't even _remotely_ care, but there's something about John's enthusiasm that's, well, not infectious, exactly, but entertaining. John finds it so easy to care about things.

The two of them met when they were young, Dave was eight and John was seven. Bro was trying to find a new job – the one he had wasn't paying the bills – and they ended up at this restaurant. The manager had told them no, not hiring, even though the sign in the window said otherwise. John's dad had shown up and offered to rent them the attic space in his house – it was roomy, he could convert it into bedrooms, he'd said, no problem – and cheap enough that Bro could keep his old job. It took three weeks and they'd moved in.

They still technically pay rent, but Mr. Egbert never asks for it. Bro pays whatever he can.

The Egberts are the only thing in Dave's life that have ever made him want to thank the gods.

John, John with his blue yarn, he'd almost died as an infant. His mother died in childbirth, John had come close, but he'd pulled through. Mr. Egbert had taken him to the temple of Breath and dedicated him there, so John wears the yarn. It's a symbol of devotion. When John had turned sixteen, Dave had overheard his father telling him that he didn't have to wear it if he didn't want to, he could make that choice for himself. John hadn't stopped.

John likes to tell the story of the god of Breath growing wings after he finally learns to love himself, and fuck, it's a cheesy story, but the way John tells it makes Dave feel a little bit better about life. Between John and Jade, Dave doesn't understand how he ended up surrounded by so many cheerful morons.

Sometimes, secretly, he's glad he is.

-

Sometimes, Rose pauses to appreciate the craftsmanship of the altar candelabrum. Silver, never goes two days without being polished, twelve arms, wrapped with intricate vines, a gemstone set in each one: ruby for Time, onyx for Space, deep-blue sapphire for Void, and so on.

Most families, if they have one at all, have a simpler altar than this, but the Lalondes are not most families. They don't have a favored deity, as Rose's mother believes that a little favor from all the gods is more helpful than a lot of favor from one. Rose is inclined to agree with her, which is a bizarre enough occurrence in and of itself; she flirts with favoritism occasionally, but she finds it difficult to stick to only one god. They're all so fascinating. Anyway, there's no one-god altar that looks this impressive: the silver candelabrum, the twelve small, detailed sculptures, the colors and the ribbons and the pretty, dark wooden table they sit on. The Lalondes pray to the whole fucking Duodecad because they can _afford_ to. Rose doesn't like to think about it that way, but that doesn't make it less true.

Her interest isn't exactly congruent with piety. It's closer to the interest one has in characters from books; she admittedly has a taste for the fanciful that is inappropriate for a girl of her intellect (her mother's words – or, at least, what Rose imagines they would be, if her mother stopped being disingenuous long enough to speak her mind). She spends much of her time reading, and most of her books are epics and prayer compilations and anything about the gods she can get her hands on. Her notebooks are filled with scrapped essays and analyses and the occasional finished one – those got her accepted into advanced education, which meant she didn't have to start work at sixteen.

After her birthday, she'd left for school, left her friends behind – Jade in the Space temple and Dave washing dishes. Maybe they'd been bitter, or maybe they hadn't – Dave had never enjoyed school anyway – either way, she never got around to asking. She hadn't spoken to either of them, or John, since leaving. Apparently, John had started working at his father's business after his sixteenth, which was hardly surprising. Rose had never meant to desert her friends, but…

People drift apart, she tells herself. Especially children on the cusp of adulthood, some thrust into the grown-up world and others shipped off to cozy schools where they can pretend adulthood is never going to happen to them.

Rose is home for the summer, and yet, she can't bring herself to visit any of them. She doesn't want to face the possibility that they might hate her – or worse, that they might not care.

She won't admit it, but she missed taking care of the altar while she was away. It didn't lack care while she was gone, but she enjoys the work – picking dried wax off of the silver, wrapping the ribbons neatly around the candles. She cuts off a length of orange ribbon and twists it deftly around a candle – as soon as she ties it off, the candle –

The candle's wick starts to burn. Rose drops it with a start, only to hear a cackle from behind her.

"Oh, man, that was _awesome_. You should have seen your face! Well, I couldn't see your face, but, you know, I'm sure it was fucking hilarious."

The candle stops burning before the floor catches fire, thankfully, and Rose turns, still kneeling. Her first thought upon seeing the intruder is that every sculpture she's seen managed to get the very essence of this girl correct – grinning, proud, hair long and tangled – but none of them really captured the shine of reckless delight in her eyes, nor how intimidating she is, despite the fact that Rose has at least an inch on her when she stands up, composing herself.

"I had to lurk back here and wait for you to get to my candle – it wouldn't have been nearly as effective if I'd lit up someone else's, don't you think?"

"Vriska," Rose says, folding her hands carefully behind her back. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"

The goddess laughs again, loud and sharp. She wears this thigh-length blue jacket with gleaming gold buttons, thrown open carelessly, and – along with her head thrown back in laughter and her hands on her hips – it makes her look every bit a pirate, which Rose finds amusing and unsettling at the same time. It also makes Rose feel vastly underdressed in her lavender nightgown.

"I've got a proposition for you," Vriska says, shifting her weight and assuming a perfect contrapposto.

"Ah." Rose looks at her fingernails, attempting to casually avoid Vriska's piercing cerulean stare. "Before you begin proposing, I feel like I should ask: do I have a choice in this matter?"

When Vriska grins, it feels a bit like staring into the smile of a great white shark. 


	3. doom

Kanaya finds Aradia in her suite, sprawled across the bed. One wall is covered with illegible words (or, perhaps, some arcane runes Kanaya can't decipher – it's impossible to tell, really). Aradia is breathing heavily, clenching and unclenching her right hand.

"Oh dear," Kanaya says, closing the door behind her. "Your handwriting is ghastly."

Aradia doesn't seem surprised at the intrusion, and she sits up slowly. "Hmph. They talk fast." She touches her temple with an index finger. "You oughta try keeping up with them."

"I have never seen someone exhaust herself by writing." Kanaya joins Aradia on the bed. "I take it the voices are being talkative again. Have they provided any new information this time?"

The other goddess shakes her head. "It's repetition, mostly. They mentioned the humans a few times, but nothing new."

"Something is troubling you."

"Huh? Well, yes." Aradia points at a section of wall, and Kanaya recognizes familiar symbols, albeit hastily scrawled. "They won't stop talking about the impending apocalypse. It's just the old prophecies repeated, but frequently enough to worry me."

Kanaya frowns, thinking. Panic is an easy reaction, but it isn't helpful. Calm, cool logic is more difficult. "'Impending' is a relative term. As an immortal, I do not think it's worth getting worked up about."

"Come on, Kanaya." Aradia rests her head on the other girl's shoulder, sighing. "They tell me about these humans, how something important is about to happen, and now this talk about the end of times, and – Look, the voices of fate are fundamentally opposed to coincidence."

Kanaya finds it difficult to look away from the four recognizable symbols on the wall, now that they've been pointed out. Four gods, prophesied to bring about the end. The first time she heard the prophecy from Aradia, only one of the names had surprised her. What his part in it could be, Kanaya cannot imagine. "Did the voices of fate perhaps deign to inform you whether or not our human protégés would succeed in whatever venture they're going to undertake?"

"They chose to withhold that bit of information." Aradia pushes herself off the bed and smoothes her skirt. She begins to circle the room slowly. "It would be rash to assume that these four children are supposed to stop the end of the world, wouldn't it?"

"It would." _It would be rash to assume that they could_ , Kanaya thinks, but she doesn't say it. "Are you sure we should speak to them now? There is nothing we can tell them."

"I've already visited one of them," Aradia says. "You know that."

"The atheist. I thought he might be the most difficult to convince, but from what you've told me, he seemed compliant."

Aradia shrugs. "He's smart. The rest of them should be easier. We have a Space priestess – I think we both know who's going to give her the news."

"I'll visit her soon enough. She spends many nights alone by the temple altar."

"And a Breath devotee–"

"Tavros listens to you, and he's trustworthy. Ask him, and he'll speak to the boy for you." The thought makes Kanaya nervous – the god of Breath rarely speaks to mortals. It isn't because he despises them – he despises hardly anything – but because he can barely get a sentence out without hesitation. Even mortals make him anxious. No one ever suggested sending Tavros to deliver a message to Earth. Still, the human boy seems to hold him in the highest esteem. If the god speaks to him, the boy will listen.

"The last child is more of a wild card." Aradia stands by her wall, tracing the humans' names with her fingers. "She's–"

"She's a scholar," Kanaya interrupts. "She studies our mythology incessantly, but rarely prays. She offers no devotion, but she is familiar with nearly every story that mortals have told about us throughout the ages, true or not. Her level of knowledge at sixteen surpasses many–"

Aradia's eyebrows threaten to escape from her forehead. "You've been doing research."

"I – I thought it was sensible to be familiar with these humans, if we're to enlist their help." Kanaya swallows. Admittedly, she finds the human girl fascinating, even admirable. Zealots and devotees aren't exactly in short supply. Scholars, intellectuals – Kanaya finds their way of respecting the gods much more interesting.

"Of course." Aradia is smiling – on anyone else, it would be a smirk, but Aradia is rarely smug. "You can visit her then. She's unaffiliated, and you seem to know her the best."

Kanaya nods. "I'll speak to her as well."

"Then it's settled." Aradia suddenly turns away from Kanaya to look at the wall. "I need to pay someone a visit."

Kanaya has no trouble figuring out exactly who Aradia is going to see. "Be careful down there," Kanaya says, standing and brushing down a particularly wild strand of the other goddess's hair.

Aradia smiles. "The dead haven't hurt me yet."

-

The underworld is a surprisingly quiet place. The dead, after all, have little left to say. They shuffle along in silence, staring blankly at their feet, walking nowhere in particular. Their shoulders bump Aradia's as if they don't even notice her. Whether they do or not is hard to say.

Aradia finds the person she is looking for without much difficulty. Sollux is seated cross-legged on the ground, scribbling something on the blank page of a book. He looks up when he hears her coming.

"Hello," Aradia says.

Sollux stands up, closing the book in his hand. "Hey."

The pale ghost of an elderly man walks between them without acknowledging their presence. Aradia waits for him to pass, then takes a few steps and throws her arms around Sollux's thin shoulders. "I've missed you."

He hugs her back without much enthusiasm, but Aradia has known him far too long to take it personally. "Yeah, yeah. I haven't gone anywhere, you know."

"I'm sorry." It's hard for Aradia to say how long it's been since she last visited. In the immortal realms, time means nothing. Her sense of the passage of time is only infallible on the mortal plane. Truth be told, the underworld messes with her head. In Alternia, the gods' home, the lack of time progression is soothing. Here, everything is muddled. It makes Aradia less than comfortable.

She knows it's no excuse. He's no happier to be here, and he can't leave.

"Yeah, well." Sollux looks for a moment like he might argue, but then he just shrugs. "What do you need?"

Aradia feels slightly guilty – he knows she has a purpose for coming here. Still, there's no use hiding under false pretenses. She has something to discuss. "The voices," she says, and Sollux nods before she says anything else.

"Talking about those humans again?" Sollux shoves his hands in his pockets and starts to walk. Aradia follows. It's impossible not to notice the way he moves – it bears an eerie similarity to the dead that walk aimlessly around him.

"Yeah. That and the end of days."

"New stuff?"

Aradia shakes her head. "Nothing they haven't told me a thousand times. It's just that they won't shut up about it."

Sollux turns to face her, but he's not looking over her shoulder. She can practically see him thinking. "You wanna know if I've noticed anything, right?"

Aradia nods.

Sollux pulls his left hand from his pocket and glances around the cavernous space. "You," he says, pointing at a dead man far behind Aradia. While the spirit shuffles towards them, Sollux speaks. "Suicides," he says. "A lot of them."

The man reaches them and looks at Sollux expectantly. "Show her," Sollux tells him.

The man turns his back to Aradia and peels his shirt off. Across his upper back, a glowing brand – a pair of wings. Aradia bites her lip. "Hopeless committing suicide is nothing new," she says quietly, but she turns her head, looking at the wandering dead. Peeking out from many of their threadbare tunics, the curvilinear forms glow faintly gold.

There are too many.

Sollux shrugs. "Don't know what it means, but I know the prophecy about as well as you do. Coincidence?"

"No," Aradia admits. This is a small matter, but the implications make her skin feel tight. She had expected more time. "I hate to cut this short, but–"

"Shut up," Sollux says, waving her away. "You've got shit to do."

"Thank you." She squeezes him into a hug one last time. "I'll see you soon, Sollux."

"At this rate, you might not be able to find me in the crowd next time."

It's supposed to be a joke, but Aradia can't get herself to laugh.


End file.
